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Kiran Aditham
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Kiran Aditham is a Business Management grad from the University of Central Florida, Aditham earned his stripes as a freelance writer in music/arts publishing.

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NFL Gives Playoff-Hungry Fans a Lift on Web-Based “Bandwagon”

Written on
December 27th 2006
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by Kiran Aditham  |
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With Christmastime ending and the New Year looming, most American sports fans can sense that the playoffs are about to commence in the NFL.

As the chips n’ dip gets set on the table, the brews get uncapped, the jerseys get adorned, and the testosterone fills the air, the NFL is capitalizing on the postseason drama with not only its usual TV and print blitz, but an online push that shows the strides the league is making in interactive advertising.

With the “Playoff Bandwagon”, the NFL and interactive agency Atmosphere BBDO are offering an interactive experience which Atmosphere’s creative director Patrick Clarke insists will please diehards and playoff-hungry fans—no matter if their favorite teams made it through or not. “A lot of mainstream fans will still follow the playoffs even if their teams are eliminated,” he tells ADOTAS. “That said, there’s a little bit of a drop-off where teams that have been eliminated, those fans that are not already avid fans may not follow the playoffs and watch every game. So what we decided to come up with was to create some sort of fun interactive tool that gave you incentive to watch the playoffs if your team was knocked out.”

So, did your team get knocked out of playoff contention, and/or are you willing to switch jerseys and foam fingers for a day? Well, by visiting nfl.com/bandwagon, fans are treated to a unique, first-person sojourn through a virtual locker room, picking their favorite team first, and then answering a series of five humorous, odd, randomly chosen questions fired off by a familiar narrator. “What [it entails] are a series of blind questions that are being asked to you by Harry Kalas, who’s the iconic voice of the NFL,” says Clarke. “He asks these questions, gives you some flip answers, and you don’t know why you’re being asked these questions. But it’s randomized, so each time you come, you may get a whole different batch of questions and [randomized] replies.”

The responses you give to any one of the 21 different questions in turn trigger a logic-based algorithm (offering approximately 63 custom one-line Kalas responses) that assigns each “Bandwagon” participant a corresponding playoff team. Once the user has had their team systematically generated by NFL Playoff Bandwagon, they are prompted with tune-in information so that they may actually follow that team in the NFL Playoffs.

“It’s really geared towards avid fans, but especially mainstream fans,” Clarke adds. “It’s football-centric with humor and pop culture references. He continues “It’s eliminating teams that are still in the playoffs based on your preferences to the questions asked. Once you’ve gone through the series of 5 questions, the logic is revealed to you even if the logic is tongue-in-cheek. It’ll maybe ask you “facial hair or no facial hair”, you end up getting the Steelers picked to win, it’s because Bill Cowher has a moustache. The logic appeals to you and there’s incentive to watch that team’s game in the playoffs, and you can possibly pass it on to a friend or do it over again.”



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